Saturday, July 20, 2013

The Incredible Shrinking Manuscript

Since Tuesday, I've been going through my manuscript, looking for dead wood to prune. So far I've made three passes and I've managed to lop about ten thousand words, not counting the TWENTY PAGES of endnotes I also cut. I'm confident that my readers will be smart enough to figure out what's going on without help from me (although sure was fun adding all that history and culture!) Right now I'm printing out a fresh hard copy because I find it much easier to edit on paper rather than onscreen. I still need to add chapters, smooth out a few rough spots, and add a prologue and epilogue.

At the suggestion of a friend who writes, I picked up one of Donald Maass's books on writing the breakout novel. I'm hoping it'll give me some ideas for the prologue/epilogue. I have some thoughts of my own, but I figured it couldn't hurt.

The hard part will be seeing if I can cut the novel down further. As Professor Strunk says, "Omit needless words." (Rule 17, Elements of Style) I did try to be as concise as possible the first time through, but that doesn't mean I can't trim more, especially given my penchant for rambling on about historical bits I find fascinating but which aren't central to the story. Sixty pages gone is nothing to sneeze at, however, and I do hope the finished project will be acceptable.